Coffee-mate Coconut Lime
Nestle (2024)
My first job after college was with Nestle. I started off as a customer service representative handling consumer phone calls and emails before first moving on to work with the social media team, then as a "consumer engagement specialist", which is a fancy way of saying that I monitored other people's work, and then finally as a trainer. For most of my six and a half years, I worked for the Nestle CBI team which handled confections, baking, and ice cream products. However there was a shakeup shortly after I was promoted to trainer. The baking products were taken off of my team and assigned to the new "Nestle East" team while the beverage and foreign import products were assigned to my team, which would now be called "Nestle West". Coffee-mate was one of the beverage products that now handled by our team.
The marketing team for Coffee-mate had a knack for making things interesting, from creating a line of Star Wars packaging for their liquid creamer, to holding a special dinner for a woman who was responsible for 1,519 phone calls, 2,337 Facebook posts, 1,868 emails, and 17 letters asking for the company to bring back the discontinued Amaretto flavor. This consumer was surprised with a bottle of Coffee-mate Amaretto and told that it was being brought back for a limited time. It has since been discontinued again, which caused this consumer to go right back on her campaign that is apparently still active to this day.
My favorite Coffee-mate marketing stunt from my time with Nestle was when they opened a pop-up coffee house called the All Natural Bliss Cafe. This coffee house was operated by baristas who worked in the nude (well, in body paint) to promote the fact that the new Coffee-mate Natural Bliss creamer was made with all natural ingredients. It wasn't quite Clerks 2, but hey... we were handing questions, comments, and concerns about coffee creamer... we'd take whatever excitement around the office that we could get.
As bizarre of a campaign as that was, it pales in comparison to their current product promotion.
Coffee-mate Coconut Lime was created to be mixed with Dr. Pepper soda, and while I'm sure that this may sound pretty gross on the surface, the combination is surprisingly tasty.
I couldn't find any instructions for the proper Coffee-mate to Dr. Pepper ratio, so I just poured some soda in a cup, then poured a few tablespoons of the creamer on top, then added more soda and stirred it up. The results are hard to describe. It tastes a bit like the last few sips of a Coke Float after most of the ice cream has melted, but with the added combination of coconut, lime, and whatever ingredients make up the Dr. Pepper flavor.
I guess you could just use the creamer in your coffee, but where's the fun in that? Come on... give it a shot. You know you want to try it. Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?
